


Time After Time

by 1780AWintersBall



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angry and pissed off Hamilton, Book References, Christmas stories, F/M, Hamilton is Not Okay, M/M, Major Character Death because he's already dead, NEWFOUNDLAND YAY!, SO, Sorry I'll write better soon mmmm, Sorry about I's The B'y, There will be a time when I get good at writing, Tonight is not that time, after the duel, graverobbing, yay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-01 05:24:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12698256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1780AWintersBall/pseuds/1780AWintersBall
Summary: Thomas Jefferson, as the President of America, has been grieving over Alexander Hamilton's death. Contrary to people's belief, Thomas did actually care about Hamilton, maybe more than he'd like to admit to the press. While grieving is one thing that Thomas should soon get over, he's stopped from doing so by an extremely unexpected interruption.





	1. Chapter 1; Leave Me Alone

Thomas Jefferson couldn’t get what was written in black and white all across the political section out of his mind. Alexander Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury, was shot and killed in a duel against Thomas’s own Vice President Aaron Burr in Weehawken, New Jersey, July 11, 1804.

  It’d been two weeks, and he’d been trying to make relations even just slightly better with the Federalist community, especially now, since they were almost all gone, whether newly changed Democratic-Republicans or just straight up dead. Now, Thomas didn’t care. Hamilton, a highly regarded Federalist, a man that Thomas had respected as a smart individual, and a man he considered a very creative and worthy, if loquacious, debater, was dead.

  He thought about visiting the late Secretary's wife, Elizabeth Hamilton, to see if she needed any help and/or money from the government, but eventually decided against it. Number one, Thomas was- no, had been -almost deadly political enemies with her husband, number two, Eliza didn’t deserve the humiliation of her dead husband’s political rival giving her aid, and number three, she came from an already very well-off family; the Schuyler family.

  Now, Thomas sat in the Oval Office, in his swivel chair, his back to the door. He was contemplating a lot of things, and was truly _not_ in the mood for any interruption. But of course, with Thomas’s luck, interruption is just what he got.

  There was a loud _SMASH_ behind him, and Thomas lept to his feet, spinning around on his heels. He hadn’t heard anyone come into the room, and he’d been in such deep thought that he could have been scared by a pin drop.

  As Thomas realised what he was looking at, he started to think the lack of sleep for many days was starting to catch up on him. There, in the middle of the room, was a very sheepish looking Alexander Hamilton with his hands in the air in front of him and a smashed vase that used to hold a couple pink carnations and white stargazer lilies on the floor, broken into pieces.

  Finally, Hamilton broke the suffocating silence that had settled down around the two, talking at rapid speeds. “J-Jefferson, I’m honestly and truly sorry for breaking your vase, I was simply trying to get a better look at the flowers, see, I’ve never really been a botanist, and thought I could perhaps attempt to glean what they mean, and when I went to pick up your truthfully beautiful vase, it slipped through my hands, and I thought I could perhaps catch it in time, but then the water went through my shoe, and I knew that you’d think that was odd, so my concentration dropped, and the vase slipped through my hands again, so I am completely sorry, and if you just, perhaps, need time alone, I can-”

  “You’re dead,” whispered Thomas, his voice failing him.

  He was trying to get his mind to stop screaming _HE’SDEADBUTHE’SHEREANDTHAT’SWRONGWHATISWRONGWITHHIMWHYCAN’THEJUSTDIEWHYDIDHECOMEHEREOHMYGOD_ and actually focus on Hamilton. His attempts half worked, and he started to see that Hamilton was a little transparent. Actually, not a little transparent, a _lot_ transparent.

  His feet seemed to be non-existent, as though he were walking on air, with just barely a faint outline around where his shoes should have been, and his legs only got slightly more visible the farther up Thomas looked. His jacket faded at the bottom, and there seemed to be a slight breeze where he stood, blowing his jacket, even though there were no windows open. His shoulders and head were the most opaque parts of him, while his arms faded downwards from his shoulders to match the rest of his body. His mouth emitted breath as though it were the middle of winter, puffing out formless clouds of phantasmagorical, surreal gas, even though the room was nowhere near the temperature when breath starts to freeze (it was, in fact, the middle of summer, darn it, and Thomas would rather like it to stay that way for a while!). His bright violet eyes were shining even brighter than they had in life, he had no signs of weariness, tiredness or hunger, and his flaming red hair (which was quite like Thomas’s own hair, though more vibrant) seemed to actually be on fire. He looked, in general, like if he had taken better care of himself at his time of death, with little to no self-influenced damage showing.

  But the most shocking thing about him was the small, bloody bullet entry wound in between his ribs that seemed to be way deeper than what Thomas first thought it would be. It seemed to be leaking blood still, though every time a drop fell from the torn fabric and ruined skin, it disappeared just like how his body seemed to and was completely gone by the time it reached the carpet. It looked horrible and infected, as though there could be fly larva living in it, though nothing in it moved, and it glistened with the sort of evil shine that only blood could bring.

  It was right at that moment that Thomas’s brain actually let him realise what he was looking at. Hamilton was a ghost. Hamilton was a ghost and he was standing in Thomas’s office looking sheepish over a broken vase.

  “H-Hamilton, you’re dead,” Thomas repeated.

  Hamilton seemed to lose some of his previous sheepishness, replacing it with mild amusement, and he crouched down to start picking up the broken ceramic of the vase. His hand passed through the ground to pick up the tiny pieces that had buried into the carpet. “You just noticed?”

  “Wh-what…” Thomas found it hard to put words through his suddenly very dry lips. In fact, he found it generally hard to breathe. And actually, as he started to think about it, the room was losing air, becoming more pressurized, and getting colder, as though something was using up all the heat. “What are you doing here?”

  Hamilton looked up from the floor with a questioning smile, then straightened up with two of the biggest broken pieces of vase filled with some of the smallest. He put the pieces into one pile in one of his hands, using the other to cover the bloody wound in his abdomen that Thomas kept staring at. “What am I doing here? Jefferson, why wouldn’t I come back to the place where I started so much?”

  Thomas gave an annoyed smile at the unbelievably Hamilton-esque words that just came out of the ghost’s mouth, and relaxed a bit. Hamilton walked- or rather, glided while bobbing a little -over to the small metal trash can that sat at the left side of Thomas’s desk and dumped the shards of vase into it, then turned back to Thomas.

  “So,” he said, “I guess my gig is up, huh? You’ve seen me now, what are you going to do about me, if anything?”

  Thomas stared at Hamilton, then asked slowly, repeating himself again, “What are you doing here? And why have you come to me and not, say, Ms. Hamilton or Burr?”

  Hamilton sighed, a particularly large puff of white breathy fog coming out of his mouth. “I guess that’s a reasonable question. I’ve come to you because my being won’t let me go to anyone else. And before you ask,” Hamilton held up a hand before Thomas could say anything, “I don’t know why, or why I’m not tailing and haunting Burr, so just, don’t ask.”

  “Uh, okay…” Thomas thought for a second, then asked, “so why are you back, though?”

  Hamilton laughed a bit, the sound of it not really there. It sounded like if someone laughed down a marble hallway in a cathedral, kind of muted and reverberating, multiplying itself with echoes. It sounded like if you heard death laugh, and Thomas supposed that was exactly what he was listening to.

  “Well, I could give you a list of thirty things just off of the top of my head, but I feel like that would take awhile,” Hamilton chuckled. Then he turned more sombre, the air shifting with Hamilton’s mood and becoming more frigid, and he said, “But in all seriousness, I’m not completely sure.”

  Hamilton turned away from Thomas, his head tilted towards the window that the flowers had been in. “Perhaps because I left my dear Eliza with so little, or because I was shot to death. Maybe because I still had so much that I had planned to do, so much that I had planned to experience and _live_. I don’t know.”

  “Hm…” Thomas took the back of his swivel chair, which had been left facing the back of the office, and turned it around, taking a seat in the chair itself. “How long have you been here, then, with me?”

  Hamilton turned back towards Thomas, his face going from sombre to bright red, and he started to stutter. “W-well, I, uh, I may h-have been here f-for the, uh, the p-past-”

  “You’ve been here the whole time, haven’t you?” asked Thomas, a little bit of annoyance in his voice. “You’ve been here, and you haven’t said anything, you haven’t shown yourself, you haven’t done anything? Hamilton, how could you leave me to wallow in such grief when you know you’re still here?!”

  Hamilton was silent for a moment, his blush dying down. Then he whispered something unintelligible, and Thomas had to ask for him to speak up.

  “I didn’t think you cared,” whispered Hamilton. “I thought you were putting up a front, trying to get the public on your side, I… I’d never seen you so much as shed a tear, but then, last night, in the privacy of your home, you… I’m sorry, Thomas.”

  Thomas was stunned by Hamilton using his first name, but wasn’t all that shocked about Hamilton’s thoughts of him not caring. They were worst political rivals, Hamilton’s death should have been a relief. But to everyone, including Thomas, it wasn’t. It was an unfortunate end to a brilliant man.

  Thomas breathed out a sigh. “Fine, I accept your apology. I have a couple of papers I need to work on, just try not to be too much of a disturbance, okay?”

  The room got slightly warmer as Hamilton smiled, then said, “Well, no promises.”

  “Thanks, Hamil-”

  “Mr. President, sir!” cried a young voice at the door.

  Thomas’s head whipped around to the saluting young man in the doorway, almost giving himself whiplash, as Hamilton was shocked into losing his visibility, disappearing in a matter of seconds. The room turned back into its normal temperature of rather warm, and Thomas felt like he could breathe again.

  Thomas was annoyed at the messenger who had just barged into his office without his consent, as he stood up and used his full height against the intruder. He was the President of America, darn it, and he demanded working protocol. “What have I told you people about barging into my office? I will not tolerate it for one second. If you have something you need to say, you can knock and wait for me to say ‘come in’. Is that clear?”

  The young saluting messenger seemed to shrink under Thomas’s words, and he fervently replied. “Yes, sir, of course, sir, won’t happen again, sir, I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Good,” sighed Thomas, as he looked back to where Hamilton had just stood. There wasn’t the slightest trace that the man had even been in the room at all, except for the broken vase and dying flowers. “What do you need, boy?”

  The messenger seemed to brighten up a bit, then said, “Oh, right! I was told by Secretary Madison to remind you about your meeting today. It starts in about…” the boy scrunched up his face, “twelve minutes?”

  Thomas jumped out of his seat. “Oh my goodness, I forgot! Of course, how could I forget, this is a meeting to jump public relations with the government, of course!”

  Thomas rushed to the door, pushing past the young messenger, calling over his shoulder, “Thank you, young man, I’ll repay you somehow, remind me, alright?”

  “Alright!” called back the man with a little bit too much joy.

  Thomas gave it no mind. He booted it all the way to the meeting room, which was farther than he thought, then stopped right outside the door. Quickly, he checked his appearance in the mirror-like surface of yet another vase, then calmly and collectedly made his way into the meeting room, where everyone was waiting on him.

  Everyone was already there and in their seats when Thomas made it inside. He cursed himself for forgetting, then slipped into the seat at the head of the table, which was always reserved for the President. Thomas sighed as the meeting began, now with him in it. It was, of course, a debate, which was between the Secretary of State and Thomas’s dear friend, James Madison, and the Secretary of Treasury, Albert Gallatin.

  Then, halfway through the meeting, the air seemed to shift, and everyone shivered. Thomas looked around for an open window or something, but then remembered what had happened in his office. He was sure that he couldn’t just tell anyone about the real cause of the shift in temperature unless Hamilton decided to show himself to the Cabinet, for he would be shunned for being crazy and probably taken off the duty of President.

  Finally, Hamilton did in fact become visible, but everyone else in the room kept talking as though a dead man wasn’t just standing beside the President’s chair. No one else seemed to even bat an eye.

  “Little trick I learned,” said Hamilton with a laugh, amused at Thomas’s confusion. “I can show myself to whomever I want, and I can show myself to select people, even in a crowded room. Quite handy, really.”

  Thomas made an ‘o’ with his mouth, then turned it into a nod when Madison gave him an odd look while talking. He then said, very quietly, “So are you going to stay for the meeting or are you going to disappear again?”

  Hamilton gave a grin that could have rivaled the Cheshire Cat’s. (Not that Thomas knew about that character, those books hadn’t even been written yet.) Hamilton’s grin sent shivers down his spin, and Thomas was worried about asking him why he had it on. But he did anyways.

  “Well,” said Hamilton, his malicious joy seeping into his voice, “I thought I could give you a few tips while this meeting continues, okay?”

  Thomas sighed discreetly, then whispered, “Sure, go. But make it quick, I do need to listen.”

  “Oh, but of course, Mr. President,” said Hamilton mockingly, giving a little bow, “I wouldn’t want to, quote unquote, ‘waist your time’! Now then!”

  Hamilton leaned down onto the chair arm, phasing into Thomas’s arm, so that his mouth was close to Thomas’s ear. It made Thomas’s entire arm feel like it had been plunged into ice water. His cloudy, puffy winter breath was washing over Thomas’s whole left side of his face, and it felt like death itself was breathing on Thomas, trying to drag him to an early grave. Thomas shivered again, making Madison give him another odd look.

  “So,” Hamilton pointed to someone down the table with his left hand, his right arm staying in Thomas’s. “I think that that guy has horrible ideas, you shouldn't listen to him, he’ll just mess up the country. That guy,” Hamilton waved his hand towards a different man, “is too annoying and has a weird lisp thing going on, even though I _know_ he can speak normally, so you should fire him, _immediately_ , and then that man over there,” Hamilton nodded his head and waved his hand at Albert Gallatin, “is an absolutely horrendous Treasury Secretary, he can't do jack, fire him and get someone with at least a little competence.”

  Thomas sighed, then pulled his arm off of the armrest, switching sides so that he didn't have to suffer in the horrible, biting cold Hamilton brought.

  “I can't just fire them, Hamilton,” he mumbled under his breath, making sure Madison wasn't looking or paying attention to him, “that'd be bad protocol. And I have to listen to Henry Dearborn, because that's the point of a Cabinet meeting.”

  “Hm…” Hamilton thought, then stood up straight from where he had leaned down, putting on another grin. “Well, if you don't listen to me, I'll drive you insane, and you can tell Madison about how the ghost of your worst political rival was singing ‘I’s the B’y’ at the top of his lungs to get you to listen!”

  Thomas frowned despite his attempts not to, and Madison seemed to notice, but didn’t say anything. “I swear, Hamilton, if you do that, I will find whatever is keeping you tied to this earth and I will personally eradicate it until there is nothing for you to possibly stay here for. Just leave me alone,” he whispered with venom under his breath.

  Hamilton laughed his oddly unnerving, echo-y laugh, then cried, “Your funeral! No one else can see me, remember?”

  He then hopped up onto the table, leaving no footprints and moving nothing but the candles in the center, and started to holler his follow-up of the threat to everyone, even though they were deaf to his tunes. A ghostly, _loud_ band struck up, invisible to Thomas, and Thomas had no doubt that he was the only one to hear the notes the band played.

  “I’s the b’y that builds the boat, and I’d the b’y that sails her, I’s the b’y that catches the fish and bring them home to ‘Liza!”

  Thomas stifled a groan as he tried to concentrate on the meeting. Hamilton’s hollering had an odd, phantasmagorical effect on the room, as the candles swayed with the beat, and the room got warmer and colder depending on if the bar that was being played had more major or minor notes. It felt like the air was being sucked out of the room, out of his lungs, and even the Cabinet members were starting to notice, though they continued the meeting.

  “Hip yer partner, Sally Tibbo, hip yer partner Sally Brown, Fogo, Twillingate, Moreton's Harbour, all around the circle!”

  Thomas put his chin in his hands while Hamilton danced across the table, disrupting the candles, the fires of which were becoming smaller and smaller. Almost all the heat had left the room, and the hot and cold fluctuations were becoming less and less apparent. Hamilton had started to mess with the Cabinet members, slipping papers away from them, sometimes swishing them through the air as though on a breeze. “Hamilton, stop it,” whispered Thomas, but the dancing ghost didn’t seem to hear. It seemed that none of the other Cabinet members besides Madison were going to notice Thomas’s odd mutterings either, and even Madison seemed to not give it much mind.

  “Salts and rinds to cover your flake, cake and tea for supper, codfish in the spring of the year, fried in maggoty butter!”

  Thomas’s head hurt, and he gave up trying to pay attention to the meeting. If they needed him to put something in, they could snap their fingers in front of his face for all he cared. Thomas looked up at Hamilton and was surprised to see that the ghost was seemingly wearing out and becoming more transparent. Alexander ‘Non-Stop’ Hamilton ran on room temperatures and heat! Though, with the speed at which the room was cooling off, it seemed that it would take the entire meeting for Hamilton to finally collapse, or do whatever ghosts did when they tire out.

  “Hip yer partner, Sally Tibbo, hip yer partner, Sally Brown, Fogo, Twillingate, Moreton's harbour, all around the circle! I don’t want your maggoty fish, they’re no good for the winter, I can buy as good as that, way down in Bonavista!”

  Finally, Thomas snapped. “Enough!” he roared, standing from his chair.

  The room became deathly silent, Hamilton freezing with his back turned to Thomas, looking over his shoulder with a look Thomas couldn’t quite place. The band immediately stopped playing, not even one single last note giving any indication that the band was still there at all. The Cabinet members looked a little scared by Thomas’s sudden outburst, not realising what it was caused from, and Madison gave him the oddest look yet.

  The room’s temperature started to go back to normal as Hamilton disappeared, and Thomas let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, relishing in the new air that had been sucked away and the release in pressure that had started to build up. He relaxed a bit, his shoulders dropping, then said, “I just need to take a breather. Sorry.”

  The Cabinet nodded, and Thomas walked out of the room, intending to go outside. At least outside, if Hamilton came back, there would be plenty of heat around and no one to witness Thomas’s conversations with Hamilton.

  Then he heard footsteps follow him out the door, and Madison called from behind him, “Thomas! Thomas, are you okay? What’s wrong?”

  The frail man matched pace with Thomas once he caught up with the President, and Thomas gave a bitter chuckle. “You wouldn’t believe me even if I tried to tell you, so it’s nothing, James. Absolutely nothing.”

  “Thomas, don’t be like that,” said Madison. “You know I’m here to support you. It’s why I stayed with you when our views were different and didn’t run along like a schoolboy to Hamilton.”

  “But see, Hamilton’s just the issue!” Thomas cried with exasperation. “That man has been screwing with me from beyond the grave!”

  “Ah, so the Federalists are getting on your nerves again?” asked Madison wisely, “We can take a break to Monticello, you know, say it’s migraines before you actually start getting migraines.”

  “No, it’s not the Federalists,” sighed Thomas. “Nobody will ever believe me if I even attempted to explain my predicament, and you would be no different, James.”

  “You don’t know that. Hit me with your best shot.”

  Thomas sighed one last time, then cleared his throat with resolve and resignation. “I’m being haunted by Hamilton’s ghost and so far he’s been a pain in the neck.”

  Madison was quiet for a second, as though weighing his options, then he responded. “You’re right, Thomas, I don’t believe you. But,” Madison shushed Thomas’s annoyed sigh, “you can prove me wrong, you can prove to me that ghosts do exist. I’m open to new ideas. Is he ‘with you’ right now?”

  Thomas rolled his eyes, a frown on his face. “No, James, he’s not. He disappeared when I flipped out on him in the Cabinet meeting. He gave me this _look_ , but I don’t know what it means.”

  Madison frowned, then said, “What look? Hamilton made a lot of frankly horrifying looks, though I’ve heard that his look of resignation, the one he made right before he died, took the cake for the number one most horrifying look he’d ever given. That man never gives up, but apparently, right before he died, he did.”

  Thomas stopped dead in his tracks. “Resignation. _Resignation!_ He looked at me with resignation, because he knew… knew _something_ , and he was just trying to, to… to do, um… something, and I blew him off! Jemmy, you’re a genius!”

  “Gee, thanks, I get that a lot,” said Madison sarcastically, then in a more serious tone, “but what do you mean?”

  Thomas crouched down slightly from his height to be the same height as Madison, put his hands on the shorter man’s shoulders, and looked him dead in the eyes, then asked, “James, who was in the meeting today?”

  Madison’s face scrunched up in thought, then he said slowly, “Um, well, you, me, the Sec of Treasury, Albert Gallatin, Sec of War, Henry Dearborn- weird name if you ask me, by the way -uh, Attorney General, Levi Lincoln, Sec of the Navy, Robert Smith, and… another, I’m not sure I know them. In total, I believe we had seven people in the room. Why?”

  “Wait, so you don’t know who that last guy is?” asked Thomas, a feeling of panic starting to rise in him, while an equal feeling of thankfulness towards Hamilton rose up too. “No idea? Not a clue, his name wasn't written anywhere, nothing?”

  Madison shook his head. “Not that I know of, sorry Thomas. But I bet someone in the meeting might know him. Or, we could go back and see if he's still in the meeting room. It would be weird if a random Cabinet member got up and left in the middle of debate without an excuse or giving their name.”

  “Yeah, that would be weird…” said Thomas letting go of Madison and looking back down the hallway the way they had come. Then he said, “Alright, but look, James, I am being haunted by Hamilton’s ghost. I hope that one day, Hamilton will stop being an obstinate prick and show himself to you, but I can’t force him, and it’s his choice anyways. I just hope… one day you’ll believe me.”

  Madison smiled fondly at Thomas. “I know, and I don’t think you’re crazy. I just think maybe the grief is getting to you. Speaking of which, are you taking care of those flowers we bought together?”

  Thomas had forgotten about the smashed vase, and gave a sigh of remembrance. “They will live on in our hearts, Jemmy. Now, come one! We have an infiltrator that we need to dispose of!”

  “Right on your heels,” cried Madison as he and Thomas raced back to the meeting room.

  Everyone seemed to be still in the room, and Madison immediately pointed towards the stranger in the room. Thomas and Madison made a beeline for him, and before anyone could stop them, they were towering over him like two hawks over their prey. Thomas started the questioning. “Who are you?”

  “Uh, uh, uh, J-John, um…” the man looked down, “… Reyson?”

  “Oh, really?” asked Madison cooley, hiding any form of emotion behind a neutral mask. “Then does anyone else in this room know you? How about Vice President Aaron Burr, would he know you? Should we bring him in?”

  “No, no, no, sorry, my name isn’t John Reyson, it’s something else! Guys, I’ve known you for a long time, how do you not recognize me?”

  Thomas and Madison exchanged a glance, then Thomas said, “Well, then? What’s your real name, hm?”

  “I… I…” the man faltered, then, as he saw no way out of the situation, cried, “My name is James Reynolds!” and punched Madison in the nose.

  The already frail man fell back violently, and as other Cabinet members got up to try and help Madison, Secretary Dearborn grabbed Reynolds and pushed him to the floor, pinning him there. All Thomas could do was gasp.

  That was the man that had destroyed Hamilton (and admittedly made Thomas’s career), the man that had run away from the law and used his wife against an influential political man. This man was one of the reasons why Hamilton had been so careless when he agreed to duel Burr. One of the reasons he’d died.

  Thomas shook his head, then moved over to where Reynolds was being held. Madison had apparently been knocked out, so Thomas had two perfectly good reasons to make Reynolds fear for his life.

  He came nose to nose with the foul man. The ground-locked man’s breath smelled like alcohol and smoke, though that wasn’t too uncommon, and his eyes were dilated in sudden fear. “Reynolds,” Thomas spat.

  Reynolds smirked. “Mr. President,” he replied calmly.

  Thomas slapped the smirk off of Reynold’s face. “You have so much to fear right now. Do you even realise what you’ve done? You’ve snuck into a private Cabinet meeting, probably to gain information that I will make _sure_ never gets out to the public, you’ve unintentionally pushed a man, former Secretary of Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, to death by duel, and you’ve just punched my best friend and current Secretary of State, James Madison. I have about four charges I can lay upon you, _at least_ , and I won’t hesitate to use them. Tell me, right now, give me _one_ good reason I should save your sorry hide from the noose?”

  Reynolds tried to rub his reddening cheek on his shoulder, but Thomas grabbed his face and made the man look at him, then screamed, “GIVE ME ONE GOOD GODDAMNED REASON, SCOUNDREL!”

  Reynolds actually started to look scared, so Thomas let go. “Send him straight to the gallows, make sure he is lynched. I want this bedswerving cumberworld off the streets and under the dirt, where he belongs.”

  Secretary Dearborn quickly complied, being followed by Secretary Gallatin and Attorney General Lincoln to make sure Reynolds didn’t escape. Thomas sighed, then gave his attention to his still unconscious friend on the floor, who was being helped by Secretary Smith. While he did so, the air shifted, and Thomas looked at the doorway to see Hamilton, moving the door ever so slightly more open.

  “Told you you should have listened to me,” he said, his voice seemingly hoarse.

  Thomas nodded in acknowledgment, and Hamilton sighed. “If you can get Secretary Smith out of here, then I’ll show myself to Madison, okay, Jefferson? He’s still breathing, right?”

  Thomas looked down at Madison, then asked Smith, “He’ll be alright, right? He doesn’t need a doctor or anything?”

  Smith shook his head. “Not from what I can tell, though I don’t really know. His nose is bleeding violently, as you can see, but other than that, there doesn’t seemed to be any other damage.”

  “Alright, thank you, Secretary Smith,” said Thomas, “you’re dismissed. We’ll plan another time for this meeting, but we’ll figure that out later. I hope to see your essays soon.”

  “Yes, of course, sir,” replied Smith, a blush spreading across his face from ear to ear. He soon scurried out of the room and was out of sight in a matter of seconds, having to first walk unknowingly through Hamilton, who shivered.

  “Alright, we’re alone, you can show yourself, Hamilton,” said Thomas tiredly. It had already been a long day, and there was a lot still to come, from what Thomas could tell. “James will wake up any second, now.”

  There was a second shift in the air again, as Hamilton moved closer to Madison with a curious look on his face, and Madison’s nose bleed stopped flowing abruptly. Thomas watched in fascination and wonder as all the blood that had spilled out of Madison’s nose moved backwards, as though rewinding through time, and the crooked angle that could have been permanently on Madison’s face was fixed to being perfectly straight with a subtle _crick_. Once it was done, Hamilton pulled out a chair from one of the tables and sat down to the side, facing Madison. He placed his hands in his lap, knitting them together.

  Madison woke up a second afterwards, his hand immediately going to his nose.

  “Ohh, what happen-” Madison’s eyes widened suddenly, then he said, “wh-what happened to the bloody nose? I did get hit, right? I didn’t just faint?”

  Thomas smiled fondly at the man in front of him. “Yes, you got hit, Jemmy James, it just got healed and cleaned up.”

  “A-and shouldn’t it be at an odd angl- OH MY GOD THERE’S A DEAD MAN SITTING IN THAT CHAIR!”

  Madison had started to look around the room, trying to piece together how his broken nose had managed to magically heal itself, and his eyes had landed on Hamilton. Hamilton gave a small smile and wave, then stood up and bowed to Madison. “Secretary Madison, it is a pleasure to see you again.”

  Thomas rolled his eyes as Madison opened and closed his mouth, his eyes bugging out, searching for words or some form of explanation. “Wha- bu- how- just- he’s- bu- huh?” spluttered Madison.

  “James, meet the ghost of Alexander Hamilton,” Thomas sighed with an eyeroll, “the one you worked with when writing the Federalist Papers. He outstripped you by twenty-two pages. Ghost of Hamilton, meet still living James Madison. He wasn’t stupid enough to die in a battle of pride and ‘honour’.”

  “Hey, Madison. I trust there’s not too many hurt feelings, right?” asked Hamilton with an even bigger smile.

  Madison finally stopped gaping, stood up from the floor with help from Thomas, closed his eyes, then took a deep breath. “Welp, you proved to me that ghosts exist. Congratulations, Thomas.”

  “Hey, James, don’t get mad at me about his death, I wasn’t there,” complained Thomas, as Hamilton gave a few echo-y chuckles. The room became colder at the sound, even though Hamilton sounded lighthearted.

  “No, no, I’m not, I’m just surprised,” said Madison, sighing in defeat. “I didn’t think the supernatural could exist outside of Washington Irving’s fantasy stories.”

  Hamilton chuckled again, then said, “Who says they’re fantasy? Just because you haven't had the pleasure of meeting the Headless Horseman doesn't mean I haven't! Perk of being dead, you meet a whole lot of supernatural beings, even ones you living people haven't ever heard of yet.”

  Madison gasped, but Thomas refrained from reacting. He couldn't tell if Hamilton was joking or not, but he didn't want to offend the man twice in one day. Instead, he said, “So, Hamilton, I’ve seen you, James has seen you, what are you going to do now?”

  This time, Hamilton full-out laughed.

  “Y-you think… you think I’m just going to leave you alone now?!” he crowed. “Now?! Ha _haaaaaa_! You must be delusional! No, of course I’m not leaving you, not now!” With that, Hamilton fell to the ground, laughing. The room had turned a warm, hotter-than-room-temperature temperature, and was actually starting to boil because of Hamilton’s mirth.

  He must have actually been making energy and warmth, instead of using it to fuel himself.

  Madison smiled at Hamilton’s mirth, and Thomas grimaced at it. The Madison started to chuckle along with it. “You know, now that I know of Hamilton’s ghostly existence, you’ll have to tell me every time he’s around and I can’t see him.”

  “Oh, man, Thomas, we’re going to have _so much fun_!” laughed Hamilton, his cheeks actually turning red as he attempted to get up off the ground.

  Finally, Thomas’s grimace turned into an anxious smile. “Yeah, okay, I guess you could do some pretty cool pranks or something. You and James could probably do something fun together. But I have a country to run, if you don’t mind.”

  “Oh, but I do mind,” said Hamilton, wiping away his tears of joy, “see, I’m hooked to you, and I have a few things I need you to come with me to retrieve, so it should be adventures galore for us. You will join us, right, Secretary Madison?”

  Madison grinned. “Of course!”

  “Right then,” said Hamilton with authority and confidence, “next stop, Trinity Church!”

 


	2. Chapter 2; Silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas and Madison meet Mulligan, there's shennanigans that goes down, and Hamilton becomes a very angry, cold ghost.

Thomas and Madison stood outside Trinity Church Cemetery at sometime in the bright early morning, taking in the calm scene that lay before them.

  The Cemetery was smallish, though large enough because of the Revolutionary War casualties. There would have been many more grave stones had people actually found the deceased's body. Unfortunately, many families had to live with the fact that the funeral would have no body to mourn over and pray with, and they’d have to make do.

  Hamilton had disappeared from sight, and Thomas still didn’t know the radius around him that Hamilton supposedly was stuck in, if there even was such a radius. He’d just have to find out by asking, he supposed. If nothing else, Hamilton was actually good with giving tips and tricks.

  Madison finally took a step into the churchyard. The grievers at many of the grave markers didn’t pay the President and Secretary any mind, and Thomas was grateful. This place, where the dead slept, (or tried to, in Hamilton’s case) was sacred, and there shouldn’t be people wanting the autograph of the President flocking around. That was just disrespectful.

  The walk to Hamilton’s grave was calm, and there was a soft, warm breeze coming from somewhere. Thomas idly wondered if the breeze was Hamilton’s doing, or if nature was actually being kind for once. The forces of nature could be so cruel and relentless, and Thomas often found himself wondering how, in the great wide world, Hamilton had ever survived such harsh treatment, like the hurricane he seemed to like to reference a lot. It seemed so impossible that a young boy could ever withstand the harsh waters and whistling winds.

  Finally, Thomas and Madison made it to Hamilton’s tombstone. They stood a respectable distance away from it, not wanting to intrude on anyone else coming into the graveyard to visit the deceased brilliant immigrant.

  Then a woman caught Thomas’s eye. She had her back turned towards him, though he could very clearly tell who she was. She was wearing a black shawl, not unlike Madison and Thomas themselves, and a long black skirt that reached the ground. Her hair was blowing in the gentle breeze, black and smooth, and the fair white skin of her neck shone through strands of hair that blew just enough out of the way. The sounds of her weeping could just be heard by the two political giants behind her, and Thomas had half a mind to go over to her and comfort her.

  Elizabeth Schuyler seemed so helpless and broken without her husband to encourage her and keep her happy, keep her on her feet. She’d had to suffer through her eldest son dying, then her husband having an affair behind her back, and now her husband dying in the same way her son had. At the very least, Thomas thought, she had her sister. At least she wouldn’t fall apart, at least she wouldn’t shut down and die in a way her husband would never want to see her go.

  So thus, it almost didn’t shock Thomas when Hamilton appeared at her side, his arm over her shoulder, and head in the crook of her neck. He looked sad, sad that his wife was so distraught and hurt by his death, and yet happy. He was most likely happy because he could see her again, that he didn’t have to keep hearing her screams of woe as the last noise he heard while he drifted off to nothingness.

  Eliza seemed to react to Hamilton’s touch, shivering a little, then relaxing into his dead embrace. She seemed to tilt her head ever so slightly onto his own, and shape her body to be almost resting on his own ghostly body. It looked like she wanted to believe he wasn’t dead, even though the proof was right in front of her.

  After a minute of silence and grieving, Hamilton let go of Eliza, the one woman in the world he loved with all his heart, and backed away, leaving her to stand on her own. She pulled her shawled closer over her shoulders, tucked her head down in a form of a bow, then walked away from the grave, presumably to meet with Angelica and go home.

  Hamilton made his way over to Thomas and Madison, and Thomas asked, “Why didn’t you show yourself?”

  “Because,” Hamilton said, “she needed comfort, but she also needs to know that I’m gone. I won’t be able to be with her all the time, and since I can’t even follow her out of the church yard, I thought showing myself would be a bad choice.”

  “And you didn’t want the emotional pain that follows showing yourself to your wife,” added Madison, who was still staring at the grave with an almost sorrowful look on his face. “You don’t want to hurt her any more than you already have, you want to give her the best chance at starting anew, and you don’t want to face the emotional scarring that action will inevitably have on you.”

  Thomas was slightly shocked that Madison heard Hamilton, but he supposed it was only fair that Hamilton would show himself now to Madison. Hamilton nodded slowly at Madison’s words, then turned away.

  “She’ll probably be fine, she’s a strong woman. She’ll find a way, and she’ll push with all her might. That’s… that’s why I loved her so, she was- no, is -such an amazing person. I couldn’t have asked for a better wife.”

  Thomas noticed that Hamilton was shaking, his puffy winter’s breath coming out in short spurts, and only just pieced together that the ghost was crying. The small tears that fell from his face looked like stardew, shimmering and bright, even though the sun didn’t seem to shine on them. Thomas walked forward a bit so that he was right beside the ghost, and did his best to give him a side hug.

  Hamilton had made himself solid enough that Thomas’s actions worked, and the smaller man seemed to finally break down. He cried silently, not a sound slipping past his mouth, even though his mouth was wide open and seemingly yelling, screaming, puffing out huge clouds of white, foggy breath, forcing his eyes closed. It was as though the universe had put his soul on mute, his tears streaming down his pale, transparent cheeks. He folded into Thomas’s embrace, gripping at his clothing, as though scared that the next moment, Thomas would be gone. There was an almost solemn finality to Hamilton’s crying, as though it was a marker to the end of something, of his life and times, and the beginning of something new, of his death and remembrance.

  Thomas let him cry for as long as he needed, Madison thankfully staying quiet behind them, and eventually, Hamilton seemed to slow down the tears that fell. He pulled away from Thomas’s embrace, leveling out his breathing, and stood tall, eyes downcast.

  “Thank you, Thomas,” he said quietly, his voice a little shaky. He did his best to compose himself, then turned back around to face both Thomas and Madison. Madison gave him an encouraging smile, while Thomas nodded with kindness in his eyes.

  “Now, then,” Hamilton said with a more even voice. He looked up at the sky, blinking away any more of his stardust tears, purposefully staying somewhat in front of his grave so that Thomas and Madison looked like they were looking at it and not going crazy. “We need to either stay here until people leave or come back at midnight when hopefully everybody’s gone, okay? I need to get something that’s buried with me, and to do that we need to dig up my grave. I can’t do that on my own.”

  Thomas balked at Hamilton’s words and cried, “What?! We can’t just…”

  Madison cut him off and gestured to some of the other people who had come around that section of the graveyard, looking at the two men like they were going insane. “Shush, Thomas, remember that he’s not going to show himself willy nilly.”

  Thomas took a deep breath, then said, “Yeah, sorry, let me be incredulous while silent, give me a moment.”

  Madison nodded while Hamilton chuckled and said a few things that shouldn’t be said in public at Thomas’s struggle. “Freaking ghost can do whatever the heck he wants but normal humans have to suffer,” mumbled Thomas. “Freaking Abydocomist Hamilton.”

  Hamilton ignored Thomas and continued his thoughts on his plan. “So, all I need you two to do is to get the dirt out of the way, ‘cause I can sort of open the tomb itself, with maybe a little help, and I can most definitely open the casket. Um… do you know what I need?”

  Madison subtly shook his head and said, “No,” under his breath. Thomas snickered at Madison’s attempts to be discrete, and Madison elbowed him in the arm.

  Hamilton sighed, then said, “I need the bullet that killed me, the one Burr shot me with, because every single thing I do, whilst visible, is painful without it. Once I have it, I can place it where it should have come with me in the first place, right here,” Hamilton pointed to his bullet wound, “and I’ll be able to do things more efficiently, without getting distracted by horrible, agonizing pain. I might actually be able to fix your vase, Thomas!”

  “I think you’re dramatizing it, you seemed perfectly content to scream some drinking song at the top of your lungs while dancing not twelve hours ago,” grumbled Thomas, thinking back to the Cabinet meeting.

  Madison raised an eyebrow at Thomas. “What vase, Hamilton? Did it have flowers in it? Specifically pink carnations and white stargazer lilies?”

  Thomas’s eyes widened, and he felt his face heat up. “Umm…”

  Hamilton seemed to have caught to the fact that the vase wasn’t actually Thomas’s, and grinned in the President’s direction. “Actually, Secretary Madison, it was! It was a nice, clean ceramic vase with a wonderful blue and red design all around. It looked almost perfectly new.”

  “And you broke it?” Madison asked, turning towards Hamilton again.

  The ghost seemed taken aback by the shift in blame, and took a step back, lifting his hands, palms out, over his chest. “Well, uh, break is such a strong word, I’d say more like, um… dropping? I-I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry, Madison! It was an accident, I swear!”

  “Of course it was,” sighed Madison, shaking his head. “Come on, you t- um…”

  Madison stared at the passersby, who were looking at Thomas and Madison with suspicion and worry, and Thomas said, “Um, uh, yeah, I broke it, James, I… no other help, just me.”

  Madison smiled at the passersby, who seemed to be at least slightly convinced that Thomas and Madison were talking with each other. “We need to have less ‘one sided’ conversations,  _ Thomas _ .”

  “I completely agree, James, now, let’s go, we wouldn’t want to be late for our, um…”

  “Our massages,” Madison supplied, hoping that there was a masseuse shop somewhere close by. “And our tailoring jobs, because we need new, um, new… pants.”

  “OH! You could visit Mulligan, he’s just down this street, I think! It would be an absolute joy to see him again!” cried Hamilton between chuckles, amused by the diversion tactics the two government men were trying to make work. “He’s got to be one of the number one best tailors in New York City, if not, the state! He works magic!”

  Madison and Thomas sighed at the same time, then started to chuckle. Thomas went to Madison’s side and offered his arm to the smaller man. “Well, then, off to Mulligan’s tailor shop. Care to join, Secretary Madison?”

  “Of course, President Jefferson, it shalt be fun, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Hamilton was on the ground in laughter, holding his stomach and bullet wound between his ribs, while Madison and Thomas grinned nervously at each other, hoping that their drama skit was working to convince people that they weren’t too crazy. There was always, always the chance that one of those people in the graveyard with them were with the press, hoping to catch either one of them doing something odd.

*~{=}~*

Finally, at about noon, Thomas and Madison made it to Mulligan’s tailor shop after wandering around, following Hamilton and his random hits of nostalgia. Madison had tried his best to be at least a little discrete, trying not to act insane, but Thomas couldn’t seem to bring himself to care. If people thought he was crazy, screw them, they weren’t President anyways.

  Outside the door, Thomas turned to Hamilton, making it look like he was looking at the sky (not wanting to give this Mulligan guy any bad press), and asked, “You sure you don’t want to come in?”

  “Of course I’m coming in, I’m just not showing myself to Mulligan,” said Hamilton matter-of-factly, while Madison replied, “Oh, fine, I’ll come in.”

  Thomas smiled, then turned to the door with a snicker. “Hm, alright.”

  Thomas held the door open for all three of them, and as he stepped in after Madison, Thomas couldn’t help but gasp. Mulligan’s shop was definitely more ornate than many Thomas had been in. This shop had definitely flourished after the war.

  The wonderful fabrics that Mulligan had gotten from many corners of the world adorned the ceiling and walls, and clothing littered the shop. There were suits and jackets, petticoats and skirts, and all manner of corsets. There were thick, warm jackets that could have endured the farthest northern winters with ease. The men’s leggings were in sixty different styles, while boosteeyays and any-coloured dresses flowed from many corners. The windows were covered by wonderful silks and velvets, and the floor was adorned with thick, sewn-together carpets made of fur and cotton puffs. At the back of the shop, a man, in a fine cotton brown waistcoat stood sewing together what looked to be a ballroom dress skirt, while a lady worked beside him, stitching together the under layers.

  Almost immediately as soon as Hamilton stepped into the shop, the temperature began to drop, but Thomas seemed oblivious to it, having gotten very used to it by then.

  A creak in one of the floorboards brought the man’s attention to Thomas and Madison, and a big goofy grin spread across the man’s face. “Why, if it isn’t our esteemed President, Thomas Jefferson! And our newest Secretary of State, James Madison! What an honour it is to meet you, my kind sirs! The name’s Hercules Mulligan, and that’s my wife, Elizabeth Sanders Mulligan. See anything you like, ring me up and I’ll size you right away!” Mulligan tapped a bell system around the walls of the shop Thomas hadn’t noticed before.

  Thomas smiled, and Madison said, “Uh, yeah, thanks. Actually, we aren’t really looking for anything, we were recommended by a friend, to see you, actually. I assume you know a man by the name of Alexander Hamilton?”

  The room went quiet as Mulligan straightened up from his crouched position over the dress, putting his needle down and walking around the beautiful garment. Hamilton, from the corner of Thomas’s eye, darted forward before the needle slipped and fell, placing it on the dress. Mrs. Sanders went out of the room, probably to make some tea as an excuse to be out of the way, as a sorrowful look fell over Mulligan’s face.

  “Erm, yes, I knew him. We were close friends. If all you want is to bring up tragic memories, then I don’t care if you’re the President or an untrustworthy British spy, I don’t want you in my shop.”

  “W-wait, wait,” said Madison apologetically, putting up both hands. Thomas stifled a groan, then moved over to a beautifully made cotton-and-silk magenta overcoat, wanting to watch the scene from a distance. “We wanted to offer our condolences, and offer you any help you may need. I was also sort of looking for some new pants.”

  Hamilton, from where he now stood, behind the unfinished dress Mulligan had been working on, laughed out loud, the sound making a few bells jingle lightly. Thomas smiled a bit, as Mulligan seemed to lighten up.

  “Ah, well, thank you, Mr. Secretary,” said Mulligan with a smile. He moved forward, then to the left, finding a linen pair of breaches. They were an odd brown and black combination, as though Mulligan had attempted to dye it one colour, then changed his mind, but it still looked wonderful.

  He held them to Madison’s legs, then said, “Here, sir, follow me. We’ll have you a new pair of bottoms in no time, I promise!”

  Madison complied with a smile, and Thomas shimmied out of the section of silks and cotton he seemed to have found himself in. “Well, Hamilton, is this place like how you remember it?”

  Hamilton jogged to where Thomas now stood, in the center of the shop, and looked around smiling. “Better. Way better. I remember when John Laurens and I would bug Hercules about how easy he found sewing and tailoring. He’d always say that he would rise above just being a tailor, that he’d be something cooler just to spite us, but he always seemed to love his job. No wonder he flourished so!”

  “I know, my husband is a work of art, isn’t he?” asked Mrs. Sanders, walking back in.

  Thomas nodded along, until he realised what Mrs. Sanders had said. “Wait, you can hear him?”

  “Yes, and see him,” Mrs. Sanders said. “He really is as ruggedly handsome as Hercules keeps saying he is, aren’t you, Mr. Hamilton?”

  Hamilton blushed, seemingly just as confused as Thomas was, then replied, “Oh, um, thank you very much, madam, I’m pretty sure that’s what got my wife to marry me in the first place.”

  Mrs. Sanders chuckled, then said, “Oh, come now, you think you can hide away from everyone, Mr. Hamilton? You should know, there are people whose sight goes beyond just the living realm. I myself taught myself to be a medium, but you’ll find there are people who are born with the gift.”

  Hamilton gasped, then disappeared from Thomas’s view. Mrs. Sanders laughed, then said, “Yes, yes, I can still see and hear you, and no, I’m no relaying that to him!”

  Hamilton reappeared beside Mrs. Sanders, a furious blush across his face, and he took a step back from her, looking excruciatingly sheepish. His blush only grew as he looked over at Thomas, and he disappeared once more, making the bells jingle again.

  “So you’re a medium?” asked Thomas, looking almost doubting. “I thought people who could talk to the dead were fakers.”

  “So you don’t believe it every time you lay eyes on you dear ghostly friend?” asked Mrs. Sanders with mirth in her voice, as though challenging Thomas to agree with her question.

  Thomas shook his head. “No, no, no, that’s not what I mean, I just meant-”

  Thomas was interrupted by a large section of blue wool landing on his head, the pins of which, that had kept it upon the wall, clattering to the ground like a packet of pins.

  Hamilton’s laughter coupled with Mrs. Sanders’s attempt to refrain from guffawing made Thomas’s gut clench, though instead of bursting out vocally, he simply threw the wool off of him and onto where he knew Hamilton was. The ghost squeaked out in surprise, then phased though the wool, letting it hit the floor with a soft  _ poof _ .

  “Oh, my, you’ve got yourself a very cheeky ghost, don’t you, Mr. President!” chuckled Mrs. Sanders, as Mulligan and Madison made their way back into the room.

  Madison stopped in his tracks behind Mulligan, staring at Thomas in a way the meant  _ How does she know? _ as Mulligan walked straight to the desk in front of his unfinished dress that acted like a shop counter.

  “Not in front of customers, my love,” he said in a very casual way, and Thomas and Madison shared a glance with one another. Surely ghosts in this shop weren’t that much of a normal thing?

  “Oh, but Hercules, they know!” she said with glee. “And you’ll never guess who this one is!”

  Mulligan eyed Thomas and Madison, who gave him dual apologetic looks. “Who is it?”

  Mrs. Sanders counted of ‘one, two, three’ on her fingers, then she, Madison and Thomas all said the ghost’s name, as Hamilton sighed, shook his head, seemingly giving up hope of staying incognito, and became visible to Mulligan to join in with saying his name. “Alexander Hamilton!” they all chorused.

  Mulligan stared at Hamilton, dumbstruck, his eyes wide. Then he walked towards him, his arm out, as though unbelieving that he was there. “No… it can’t be! You… you stayed? Why?”

  Mulligan’s hand found Hamilton’s translucent shoulder, and the two shared a look that spoke a thousand things more than any spoken word could. Then Mulligan dropped his hand, bowed his head, and smiled. He pulled Hamilton into a tight hug, making the redheaded ghost puff out an excess amount of winter breath fog. Hamilton seemed startled by the hug, but quickly reciprocated it, and the two men stayed like that for a while.

  “You know,” whispered Mrs. Sanders to Thomas, a smile dancing across her lips, “Hercules was one of the first people Mr. Hamilton met when he came here to America. They’ve stayed friends ever since, and it’s a wonder how they got though so much and ended up in the same place. You see, Hercules came from Ireland, and I’m sure you know that Mr. Ghost over there came from the British West Indies.”

  Thomas nodded as Mulligan pulled away from Hamilton, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “I’d never thought I'd see the day when my best friend becomes a spirit!”

  “Learn something new every day, Herc!” giggled Hamilton childishly.

  “But,” said Mulligan, a frown creasing his brow ever so slightly, “why did you stay? What possibly could have been enough to have kept you, a hurricane in and of yourself, here, Alex?”

  Thomas finally spoke up. “You know, I asked him that too. He doesn't know, or just won't tell me.”

  Hamilton nodded with what Thomas said, then spread out his arms, looking up and around the shop. “But look at this place! You've gotten yourself pretty well off, am I wrong?”

  “Oh, speaking of,” said Mulligan, bouncing on his heels a bit before racing back towards the desk, where Madison now stood, “your new breaches, sir! I almost got too caught up in the moment, sorry if that's a bit of an inconvenience!”

  Madison snorted, then said, “I wouldn't consider seeing one of your closest friends as a ghost for the first time since they died, which, by the way, was two weeks ago, an inconvenience to any customer, especially me. Not to worry, man, you’ve got nothing to apologize for!”

  Mulligan smiled apologetically, looked down at the counter, which held a paper that showed amounts of money, then said, “That’ll be £23.00- er, wait, wrong side, that'll be $30.11.”

  Madison quickly fished out his purse from his jacket pocket, as Hamilton smiled. Then he turned to Thomas and said sweetly, “Welp, congratulations, you've forced me to show myself to a total of three people, including yourself, within a twenty-four hour time span. Are you proud of yourself, yet, or is that warm feeling yet to come?”

  Thomas made a show of acting innocent, and said, “What? Moi? I have no idea what you're talking about.”

  Hamilton rolled his eyes, then lightly punched Thomas in the arm, making the older man laugh. Madison glanced over at them while he looked for exact change, then looked back, smiling into his purse, finally finding a penny.

  “Well, I think you boys should be in your way,” said Mrs. Sanders, moving towards the back room. “It was an honour meeting you again, Mr. Hamilton, and thank you for visiting, Mr. Secretary, Mr. President!”

  Madison nodded in agreement as Mulligan handed him his newly tailored breaches, grinning down at them. As they walked out of the shop, Madison said, “You know, Thomas, that man really knows what he’s doing, it's magical!”

  “Told you Hercules was the best tailor around!” cheered Hamilton, walking with the other two, an enormous spring in his step.

  “You seem awfully joyful for being ‘forced’ to show yourself,” said Thomas lightheartedly. He gave Hamilton a  _ look _ , which to passersby was a  _ look _ into midair, and Hamilton simply grinned back at him.

  “Yes, well, it is impossible to be angry in Herc’s presence! I think that atmosphere around him of joy and goodness is what allowed him to spy on the British in the first place.”

  “Huh,” grunted Thomas, having been previously unaware that Mulligan had been a part of the Continental Army, never mind having been a spy for the Army.

  “Yes, huh,” said Madison, looking at a cluster of people who looked to be visiting New York, “we need to find a place to stay overnight, remember our goal of coming here in the first place?”

  Thomas’s eyes widened and he snapped his fingers. “Oh, of course, right! Yes, um,  _ James _ , you wouldn’t happen to know any inns around here, would you?”

  “I actually would not,” said Hamilton, and both Madison and Thomas were shocked into silence for a couple of moments, before an inn came into view. “That, I swear, wasn’t there before.”

  Thomas chuckled, then led the way inside the inn, holding the door for Madison, but making Hamilton phase through. There was a couple grumbled offences from the ghost, and a few patriots of the inn shivered at the sudden cold that must be attacking their senses, not that Thomas could notice the change anymore.

  Just as payback, it seemed, Hamilton took a deep inhalation of breath, and blew out an enormous puff of white winter fog, covering the floor and people’s feet with phantasmagorical mist. The foggy mist puffed out any candles that had weakly flickered before with a little hiss, the wick arching downward at an awkward angle.

  The inn was dropped into a terrifying darkness, the thick wood doors doing nothing to let light in. Even if Hamilton became visible, Thomas knew he wouldn’t be able to see him. It was too dark, Thomas couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face.

  Then there came a chilling, echoing laugh from what Thomas assumed was the middle of the foyer in the inn. There was a shriek, as though someone had found a rat, and suddenly the silence was broken by blind horror and chaos, something Hamilton seemed to be enjoying.

  There was a rattling of something metal on metal to Thomas’s left, and suddenly Thomas could see an outline of his lost-and-found ghost. Hamilton’s ectoplasmic-formed body started to give off a slight, almost unnoticeable glow that grew until Thomas could see the floor around him. It was creepy, and it made Hamilton shine an off colour of excruciatingly light lime green. Any and all colours on his body seemed to either mix in with the light or be replaced by it, like his skin hue, which was, right then, replaced by that same off, neon light lime green. Thomas sighed in relief when he was finally able to see, then gave Hamilton a very stern look, and whispered, “This was unprecedented.”

  “I beg to differ,” said Hamilton with a grin, rattling the keys he seemed to have stolen in front of Thomas while Madison seemed to notice Hamilton’s soft light. “I got you guys a room without having to pay. Consider it a warning never to close a door on me, no matter if I can go through it or not, okay?”

  The haunting light that Hamilton seemed to glow with made his grin all the more mortifying, and Thomas couldn’t seem to do anything other than nod, to which Hamilton emitted another spin-tingling laugh. It seemed that everything in the ghost-produced dark and cold became gloomy and scary.

  Madison shuffled over to Thomas and Hamilton, looking very pale and shaken, and Thomas immediately pulled him close to his body for physical support. The general fear in the room hadn’t died down by any extent, and Thomas knew that if something didn’t change for the better, Madison was going to have a heart attack. So thus, Thomas ended up glared down the green ghost until he finally relented.

  “Okay, okay,” he complied, “I’ve had my fun anyways.”

  With that, he chucked Thomas the keys, which Thomas caught with the hand not supporting Madison, and faded out of sight, seemingly turning off his green glow. After a few moments, the candles magically flicked back to life, and the fog on the floor started to drift away, the source of it seemingly having been cut off.

  The scene that Thomas and Madison were greeted with was one they would rather not have had to lay eyes on in any respectable inn.

  Apparently, a lady, who had been standing near the reception desk, had actually found a rat, and a dead one at that, and had fainted into the arms of a man who was standing near enough to her to actually feel her falling on him and catch her before she hit the ground. The receptionist, who had before looked rather bored, had a petrified look on her face, as though she’d just stared down a basilisk, and a couple men, who had just come down the stairs from the upper floor, had tripped in their panic and fell the last three steps. One of them managed to break his head open, though he seemed to be alive. Hamilton was just standing above the poor man, a look of apologetic glee on his face, then started backed up the stairs.

  Thomas sighed, feeling way more tired than he ought. “What are we going to do with him, Jemmy? He was already insane when he died, how has he become worse?”

  Madison stood weakly up on his own two feet, a hand on Thomas’s arm for support. He still looked extremely pale, but at least some of the colour had returned to his face. “Don’t ask me, he’s your ghost. I’m not having anything to do with him if he has it out to give everyone within a two-hundred mile radius a panic attack.”

  “Well, we better follow him and make sure he doesn’t get into any more trouble,” commented Thomas almost casually. “This is Hamilton we’re talking about, the man could do any number of things.”

  Madison chuckled, then said, “Well, we’ll see how it goes. I think I might be able to walk now.”

  “Let’s go,” smiled Thomas, keeping his arm outstretched so that Madison had easy access.

  They followed Hamilton up the stairs, being only just able to keep up with him and his huge head start, trying to make it seem like they had already bought their room. They just made it to the room of which the key Hamilton had stolen fit, room number 13, before Madison’s legs gave out, and he landed on the floor with a soft “Oof!”

  Before Thomas could pick Madison up or open the door, the room’s door creaked slowly open, to reveal Hamilton, his head down, and his body seemingly limp and hanging in mid-air. His hair covered his face, but from what Thomas could tell, Hamilton wasn’t really in control of his movements.

  Then a voice from behind Thomas spoke, deep and maddeningly controlling. “Newly-deads like you, young fool, shouldn’t come to this fine inn. You’re a disturbance, a break in the peace we have brought upon this establishment. Leave now, or your living friends shalt be harmed.”

  “N-n-no…” stuttered Hamilton, his voice weak, as Thomas pulled Madison up off the ground and out of the way of the two undead beings. Though Thomas couldn’t see the secondary ghost, he had no doubt that he was, in fact, there.

  “No?” asked the deep voice. “You dare defy us?”

  With a horrible screech, Hamilton flew from the door and back into the room, a resounding  _ thud _ issuing from where he hit the wall. The deep-voiced ghost must have held some sway over if Hamilton was solid or not, and Thomas rather worriedly wondered if ghosts, when powerful or old enough, could possess other ghosts.

  “N-no, wait!” gasped Hamilton, and Thomas peaked into the room to see that Hamilton’s wintery breath was coming out in short, ragged spurts while he crouched at the bottom of the wall.

  “D-don’t touch them… we just need a close place t-to the graveyard…”

  The voice laughed, a deep, haunting sound you’d expect to hear in a haunted house. “Oh, gonna dig up your own grave, huh? You’re a fool if you think any… what wound is that, bullet? You’re a fool if you think a flimsy little bullet will cure all your problems, boy.”

  “I-it’ll help,” mumbled Hamilton, trying to stand up.

  “‘It’ll help’,” mimicked the ghost, making his voice high and annoying, at least three octaves above Hamilton’s natural voice. Thomas would have found the mimic funny in any other situation but this.

  “I-it will, and we need to not be caught. We’re going back to Trinity Church, and we’re going to get my bullet,” Hamilton spoke with growing authority and conviction, and Thomas felt a wave of confidence come from the room. “Just because you happen to have a territory problem doesn’t mean you can shoo off customers to this inn. You’re just shooting yourself and the owners of this inn in your collective foot.”

  The deep-voiced ghost was quiet for a moment, and after a second, Hamilton relaxed. The deep voice seemed to have left Hamilton alone, thus leaving Thomas and Madison alone, but Madison shivered, and said, “I don’t know, Hamilton, maybe we should just stay awake and in the graveyard itself? It’s not like we’re going to be sleeping there, anyways…”

  Hamilton sighed. “I just verbally battled our stay here and you suggest leaving? Mr. Madison, I greatly respect your opinion on many things, but this once, could you trust me?”

  Thomas twisted his mouth in thought, pinching his brow, then said, “No, I think I agree with James, here, Hamilton, we’d be a lot closer to the grave, you know, easy access, and beside, neither of us want to end up like you, ten feet under, having made a stupid mistake.”

  There was a cold silence as Thomas realised what he said, his eyes widening, and Madison took a wobbly step away from him. “I-I didn’t mean-”

  The air suddenly grew freezingly cold, frost starting up the walls and creating small shiny crystals in the air. Both Thomas and Madison’s breath started to look a whole lot like Hamilton’s foggy death breath, and they both started to shake uncontrollably. The frigid flash-freeze seemed to run quickly down the hall on both sides, until it seemed to hit Hamilton’s sphere of control. The windows on either end of the hall became so covered in frost that nothing could see in or out of it. Soon the ice and cold was piling up on top of itself, adding snow to the air and ground, icicles on the ceiling, and ice along the walls, replacing the frost.

  The ghost himself looked impassive, staring at Thomas with his cold, dead eyes. Their wonderful violet life-like glow had been replaced by an icy, blue-eyed stare, and Thomas shivered when he looked into them. It was horrifying, the silence of the snow and cold coupled with the usually talkative man-gone-quiet.

  But, just as suddenly as the cold had come, it disappeared. The frost raced back down the walls, and the snow melted in record time along the hall. The snow and ice crystals in the air turned to water droplets that fell with little  _ plop _ s all over the floor, and the icicles seemed to retract into the ceiling.

  “It’s fine,” said Hamilton smoothly, making his was between Madison and Thomas, not glancing at either, “I made a mistake, that’s all it was. Thanks for reiterating, Jefferson.”

  Madison silently followed after Hamilton, seemingly wanting to make up to him for Thomas, but Thomas stood stalk still, almost scared to move. He couldn’t get that look out of his mind. Why had he said that? It was such a petty thing to say, something he would have used against Hamilton in a cabinet meeting. He’d been getting along fine with Hamilton, why screw it up now?

  Eventually, Thomas got his legs working again, and he walked straight out of the inn. He had no real idea where Madison and Hamilton had gone, but he had a hunch. He made a beeline for Trinity Church Cemetery, and hoped that his hunch was right, hoped he could apologise t Hamilton for what he’d said.

  He hoped he could make things better, like it had been.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so, I'm not super sure about this chapter, I wrote it at odd intervals, and I'm super sorry for not updating anytime soon, because my work has been piling up and I'm not finding any time. You all who stick with me, thank you so much, I know it gets boring just rereading the same chapters over and over again, but I promise things will get out soon, I promise!!! Thank you for being patient!


	3. Chapter 3; Socially Unacceptable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trio finally do stuff, then depart the cemetery after much debate, Madison goes home, Thomas and Hamilton go back to 'work', and many a Christmas story is passed around.

Thomas eventually found Madison leaning on a tree near Hamilton’s grave, talking to a very angry Hamilton. He decided he did not want to get in the middle of whatever discussion they were having, so he stayed back and behind said tree and eavesdropped on what they were saying.

  “...nd you can’t change him, I know you’ve tried,” Madison said, sounding tired and slightly out of breath still.

  “I know, but that was practically the worst thing he could have said, you know? It’s like if I had brought up his dead wife and turned it into a joke, it was just mean. He could have at least realised what he was saying.”

  “Like you have much to say about that, you literally have no filter, it’s almost scary to hear you talk, sometimes. That’s actually one of the reasons why Mr. Burr shot you in the first place, you couldn’t keep your comments to yourself.”

  “Oh, so you're taking his side now, is that it?”

  “No, I didn’t say-”

  “You basically did. I made a mistake, okay? I’m sorry. I’m the one paying for it, not you, not him, not Burr, not anyone else. I’d  _ love _ to move on, and not have to see you guys screwing up our political structure, but here I am, and I’m stuck with you. It would be wonderful if we could  _ not _ bring up sensitive subjects,  _ like Jefferson did _ . And besides-”

  “Hamilton-”

  “I’m not done-”

  “ _ Hamilton _ , you’re not letting me get a word in edgewise, let me finish. I’m not defending Thomas, because I can see that what he said was wrong, but he realised what he said, and went to apologise, which is more than what  _ some _ people I know can do. So, you just need to let him come back, apologise, and take his apology-”

  “Oh, wow, thanks, Madison, I can see why you’re the fan favourite-”

  “And  _ not let words bother you so much _ . Hamilton, think about it, you’re dead because you look too deep into what someone’s saying or doing, and fight fire with fire. You wouldn’t have said much different in his shoes, I can  _ guarantee you _ , so just let him ask for forgiveness on his bad choice of wording, and let us put this behind us. It’s not as big a deal as you’re making it.”

  “Not as big a-  _ not as big a deal?! _ ” From where Thomas stood, he just barely saw Hamilton throw his hands in the air, then turn and look over his shoulder at Madison, crossing his arms. “Did you seriously just say that? Wow, okay, thanks, you’re such a great person to confide in. I’d probably get the same answer from an outsider to this situation, because honestly, you’re just as thick as a brick when it comes to this type of thing.”

  “And now you’re sinking to petty insults. Really, Hamilton, you’re blowing this up like a toddler. Forgive and forget, it’s not even that enormous of a mistake. A huge mistake would be to waltz into the either Upper or Lower Canada right now and hand them all our guns.  _ That _ would be a mistake worth all this drama. A few words, ehh, not so much.”

  There was a beat, in which Thomas could only imagine Hamilton and Madison were glaring at each other through, then Hamilton sighed, and Thomas saw his whole body practically deflate. It seemed like he had run out of ways to complain and be angry, which was almost a miracle, and he looked up at Madison from where he’d sunk through the ground. His lower half was through the dirt, while his arms kept him still visible, crossed and supporting his head.

  “Yeah, I… I guess.”

  Madison walked forward and crouched down so he was face to face with Hamilton, and Thomas could just see, in his mind’s eye, the type of encouraging smile he was giving to the ghost. “That’s right, when he comes back, he’ll apologise, I’ll make sure of that, and you can forgive him, m’kay? Then we’ll do this crazy grave robbing thing for your silly little bullet. Sound like a plan?”

  Hamilton sighed again, then smiled slightly, nodding his head. “Sounds like a plan.”

  Thomas took that as his cue, and walked out from behind the tree, making it look like he had just walked into the small clearing with Hamilton’s grave. He walked up behind Madison, then cleared his throat, shuffling nervously.

  “Ah, speak of the devil,” mumbled Madison to Hamilton, who shot up out of the ground to stand just past the generally sick man. “Thomas, we were just talking about you, would you like to say something?”

  Thomas nodded and cleared his throat, then said, slowly, “I'm… I'm sorry, Hamilton, for the harsh words I said, now can we move on? I'd much rather dig up a dead body than apologise for things.”

  Hamilton chuckled a bit, finally easing out of the anger he had been harbouring (though Thomas  _ knew  _  that things weren’t over, and as soon as Madison left, he’d get an earful), and Madison smiled. Madison then clapped his hands, and said, “Well, no time like the present, there’s no one around that I can see, let’s get this over with!”

  Thomas glanced around quickly, jolting at the realisation that it was already dark. He could see the waning crescent moon far overhead, small to his eyes, and the stars that flooded the sky when the lights were off. None of the street lamps were on, the street lighters having long since extinguished them and gone to bed, so the stars had even more ability to shine throughout the sky.

  Thomas sighed, then smiled. He then chuckled, “Yeah, let’s get this done and over with. If this isn’t the strangest thing I’ve ever done, I don’t know what is.”

  Madison smiled as well, then a frown creased his brow. “Hey, but Hamilton, do you have any way to actually get into your grave? Like, a shovel, or something? Because, I'm not digging into the ground by my hands, just saying.”

  Hamilton snickered, then said, “Yes, of course you guys will have shovels, there’s a storage shed just across the way, over that-a-ways. I'll be back in a second.”

  He waved his hand in the general direction of a looming, dark building, then shot off at a run towards it. Thomas watched him run, watching the end of his coat bob and sway in the phantasmic wind that Hamilton seemed to be subjected to every second.

  Once Hamilton was out of earshot and in the building, Madison cleared his throat, and Thomas looked at him over his shoulder. Madison had an unimpressed look on his face, and Thomas turned towards him, taking a step back.

  “So?” he said, sounding like he wanted to get his annoyance out and waiting for something from Thomas. “You know he’s going to still be mad at you. How’re you going to make it up to him? You’re going to have to do something, or he won’t trust you the same way he had been just a day ago, and I know for a fact that you want Hamilton on your side for the entirety of the time that he’s stuck with you. That ghost can and, if pushed,  _ will _ , destroy you. So what’re you going to do?”

  Thomas stayed quiet for a second, letting Madison’s words sink in, then asked, “What do I do? What can I do? That man has the ability to hold onto a grudge for his whole life, as he demonstrated very clearly to me when he was alive, so what on Earth can I do for that type of person to make it up to him? He’ll never listen!”

  Madison sighed, then walked over to Thomas, putting a hand on his shoulder. He the looked into his eyes, and said, very sincerely, “Show him that you are truly sorry, and maybe show him a good time. The afterlife is probably horrifically boring for a man like that, so maybe make him laugh for a night. You know, like, reading something together or, I dunno, just make him smile.”

  Thomas scrunched up his face and said, “You're not insinuating anything, right? Because he's already dead, and I don't want to be charged with necrophilia, no matter what we’re doing right now.”

  Madison shoved Thomas’s shoulder,  _ hard _ , then awkwardly smiled up at him. He shook his head, then said, “Only you would think of that, Thomas, only you. I was trying to be helpful, but you know, you just had to make it weird. Only you.”

  Thomas laughed, and almost choked when he heard someone clearing their throat. He wheeled around, only to be met with a face full of two shovels, held up by a glowing hand. The darkness of night seemed to let Hamilton glow like he had at the inn, and Thomas shivered, unsure whether to be happy about Hamilton’s attention-grabbing glow or unnerved about it.

  “Alright,” announced Hamilton to the two men in front of him, “I’ve found us a pair of wonderfully made shovels for the practical use of burying, so let us unbury, well, me! Should be easy for you two!”

  Thomas took a shovel from Hamilton’s grasp, holding it and weighing it. He sniffed, then had to quell the urge to throw the shovel away from him. “Ugh, I’m going to using the tool a commoner uses on a daily basis. Hamilton, how on Earth did you get by without any slaves? Truly, things like this would be a lot easier with them present, would they not?”

  Hamilton gagged, and Madison chuckled. Then, the ghost said, “We’re not bringing in anyone’s slaves, I refuse to show myself to them if that is how you’ll be treating this situation if I did. They don’t need any more work than they already have, you cruel person.”

  “They don’t mind,” scoffed Thomas as he turned towards the grave, eyeing the shovel and trying to figure out the best way to hold it, “they don’t know anything else anyways. Besides, Hamilton, you were one of the only people in this country without slaves besides the poor.”

  Hamilton rolled his eyes,  _ hard _ , harder than any living person could, and then sighed as Madison and Thomas started digging into the ground. He disappeared into the ground at his feet, and Thomas could only imagine that he'd gone into his own grave, grabbing his bullet and laying in his body, just to feel what it felt like all that time ago, before he was shot and killed.

  That reminded Thomas, he needed to find and deal with Burr. Aaron Burr, his Vice President, was the murderer of the ghost that was now under Thomas’s spade. If nothing else, Thomas kind of felt betrayed by the man. This man was supposed to be almost as able to run a country as Thomas, but he'd gone and proven himself to be unreliable and untrustworthy. That wasn't the type of person the people wanted leading, even if he is under the President.

  Burr had apparently fled New Jersey and New York, and no one knew where he went, though he hadn't been on any boats, fleeing the country, so far as Thomas knew. Thomas swore that as soon as that man came back, he’d have a lot to answer to, instead of just Hamilton’s murder.

  Thomas’s spade finally hit something in the dirt, and Thomas looked down the hole he’d dug to see the side of Hamilton’s tomb. It was a dirty white stone tomb, dirty because of the ground it was placed in. Thomas stared at it for a second, before looking up at Madison once he’d hit the same thing. They glanced at each other, then started digging around the tomb, trying to find an easy way in. It was hard, loud work, and while Thomas wiped his brow for the sixteenth time, he looked around, making completely sure that no crazy, nosy news boy was going to pop out and put in a story to the newspaper.

  Thomas and Madison finally dug out the perimeter of the tomb, then went ahead with lifting the enormous weight of the stone top from the rest of the resting place. It seemed to be slightly easier than normal, and Thomas assumed it was because Hamilton was helping from beneath. They finally heaved it off and placed it on the ground beside a different grave, Thomas wincing at the loud  _ thud _ it made. He glanced around one last time, before standing in before the grave and looking in.

  It was surprisingly clean, considering Hamilton’s apparent lack of wealth, or lack of showing off money. The casket lay calm and cold in the center of the stone, and Hamilton stood beside it. He’d already taken the lid off, and was staring at what used to be his body with forlorned eyes. There was a man who had once spoke, breathed,  _ lived _ . There was a man who had taken his life on full speed ahead, held it in both hands, threw it around like a ping-pong ball until it was a tsunami attached to a hurricane tied in with an earthquake. There was a man that could shape how he wanted to live, do what he wanted to do, become what he had fought so vigorously from birth to become. There was a man who had thrown it all away and been smashed to pieces by a tiny, metal bullet.

  There was a man who had been full of life, living on the edge, and now lay still as the stone he lay in, dead and gone from the Earth, from many people’s memories.

 Thomas sighed. Hamilton looked so distraught, so full of memories of the past and what he’d done. There was a dampness that tracked its way down his features, and for a while, he looked blurry and out of focus. It was as though his entire being was reacting to the sadness in the air. He looked like an oil painting that had been smudged by the rain, still there, but faint. He’d become translucent, and his general glow had become an deep ocean, dimmed blue. The room was cold, but not cold enough to freeze. It was as a cold that one couldn’t just shake off, not even with a blanket, though it didn’t chill to the bone. It just sat like a cloak for the dust, until Thomas finally shifted the air, hopping inside the tomb.

  Hamilton looked up from where he’d spaced off watching his body, then sniffed and wiped his eyes. Thomas thought about how ghosts worked, and wondered how Hamilton had the ability to let liquid from his eyes and nose, though only in passing. His mind immediately went to the fact that Hamilton had become brighter again, the room temperature growing warmer, and each sniff from the ghost seemed less and less filled with sadness and more and more filled with the annoyance that his nose wouldn’t cooperate. In the end, he settled with just leaving his nose to its own devices, looking up at Madison as the other man hopped down into the tomb beside Thomas.

  The tomb was quite small, only fitting the two grown men because Thomas had squished up against the casket. He had a full view of Hamilton’s body’s feet, which would have been unpleasant just to talk about, never mind see and smell first-hand.

 After a couple seconds of silence, in which Madison and Thomas paid their respects to the deceased man opposite them, Hamilton finally reached down gently and ruffled through his physical counterparts clothing. Thomas knew that his body had been well dressed by Eliza and an undertaker, and put into his favourite suit, which then hid the wound quite well. It took a minute for Hamilton to finally pull out the small, metal object, dulled and dirtied by blood.

  He held his bullet up, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath in. He then let it out slowly, and opened his eyes again, looking at Thomas with a glint in his eye. Thomas could have sworn it was something akin to life, though he didn’t get a chance to analyze it all that much. There was an almost extreme shift in the air, as Thomas and Madison started to heat up violently along with the air. It became sweltering in the small space of atmosphere, then cooled off to what it had been before. Then Hamilton smiled, jumped out of the grave, and was gone from view.

  “Well,” said Madison conversationally, panting and wheezing a little, “that happened. Was that all we came for, or do you think we’ll be getting something out of it? I thought Hamilton might have taken, like, a dozen leather-bound books for him to fill in the afterlife, but looking around here, it seems that neither Mrs. Hamilton or any of her children had enough money to buy a new suit for the deceased. That's unfortunate.”

  Thomas frowned. “No, they had the money, I'm pretty sure. Hamilton just never accepted anything extra. And besides, who would leave perfectly good, leather-bound books with a dead person? They’re never going to use it.”

  Madison rolled his eyes, then moved to climb back out of the grave that they had dug, struggling a little bit. “Yeah, well, no duh. I was thinking that the Hamiltons would have the beliefs that many people back in the mother countries have; that is, that the dead need something to take with them to the underworld, for entertainment or otherwise.”

  Thomas hummed, nodding his head slowly up and down. “Mh, I see what you mean. No, I never took Mrs. Hamilton to be the type to believe in such superstitions. You know, I’ve never actually thought about what the Hamiltons believe in. Obviously something to do with Christianity, you know, our fine phantasmagorical friend did attend a church just down the way, though I couldn’t tell you where. But, I mean, what do you think they did for religious practices? Do you think they prayed every dinner? Did something big for Christmas?”

  Madison shrugged, going over to the cap of the grave. He stood beside it, stared at if for a second, then looked up at Thomas with a slight, contemplative frown. “I can only assume they did. I’m sure I’ve told you about Christmas with my parents and siblings?”

  Thomas scrunched up his face as he thought about it, then bent down and grabbed the corners of the tomb top. He grunted, then huffed out, “No, I don’t believe Christmas is something we’ve really talked about. What did you and your siblings do?”

  Madison smiled as he gritted his teeth, helping Thomas lift the heavy stone from the ground it had impacted. “Well, let me tell you about this one very memorable Christmas, shall I? It was a quiet Christmas day, everyone had opened their presents, and had their breakfast. My father had left to go deal with something, I forget what it was, and my mother was trying to clean up the food mess around the table, so both my parents were occupied. Just as I was about to go off to my room to fool around with my gift, as the rest of the day was simply a leisure day for the family, my brother Reuben cried out, ‘A mouse has stolen my toy!’ while he ran past me. My sisters, all four of them, laughed at Reuben, as he stopped running, then Nelly yelled at him, ‘Be a man and deal with it, you wimp!’ as she threw wrapping at him. Sarah laughed so hard that I was almost scared for her health! Anyways, Ambrose and William tried to defend Reuben, and backed up his cry of a mouse stealing his little wooden soldier, but that just made the girls laugh harder. Me and Francis then had to go around the house and look for the little rodent to retrieve poor Reuben’s toy, and man, do you ever appreciate just how big a house is when you’re trying to carefully check every corner and crevasse! Eventually, Francis came rushing back to me with Reuben’s toy, which had only a couple tooth marks on it, and brought it back to Reuben. Ambrose and William had been arguing with Frances and Nelly over if there was a manly side to having a mouse steal your toy, while Sarah and Elizabeth just watched with amusement the entire time, and they only stopped to congratulate me and Francis for finding the toy. It was quite the morning, and the rest of the day was filled with William, Ambrose, Frances and Nelly’s yelling as they continued their argument. I think that argument actually lasted the entire night, too, and only stopped when the four of them went to bed and my parents scolded them for getting to sleep so late.”

  Thomas laughed, almost dropping the gravestone on his feet as they stood only a couple of inches away from the tomb. “O-oh my, James! How come this has never come up between us? That sounds like something that we would have talked about. Anyways, did Reuben ever get his honour back?”

  Madison chuckled between his laboured breathing, as he attempted to align the top stone with the bottom stone. “Oh, but of course. He killed a mouse later on, and I can only assume it was the same one, because our house was surprisingly mouse-free, from what I could tell.”

  The pair of them heaved the huge stone cap onto its proper place, then Thomas chuckled a bit through his sweat. “While that is certainly amusing, I remember quite the Christmas with my family, if you wouldn't mind my sharing.”

  Madison wiped his brow, smiling, then said, “No, of course not, I’d love to hear how the Jefferson's managed to beat my Christmas story! Besides, it's a wonderful, deep time of night to be jolly.”

  Thomas snickered, then said, “Ah, yes, as late as it is. Now, my father had taken us to a tree farm, as I'm sure your father did too. We got a tree that was maybe a little bigger than what we normally got, but that didn't bother us, not really. Our house was big, even back then, you know. This tree could easily have held all of our little decorations and candles, times three, and we had a lot of trouble reaching the top without falling into the tree itself, but somehow, we got it done. Mary, Lucy and Jane were mainly the ones doing the top, as my father would pick them up on a big wooden box, and they were the only ones okay with that. The issue was, overnight, the decorations seemed to be simply disappearing! Elizabeth, Lucy and Martha almost made a betting pool on what was stealing our decorations, because no one did anything about it for a good week! Now, my youngest sister, Anne, sure as heck wasn’t going to let that slide, so she practically ran head-first into the tree. My mother and father were furious with her afterward, as she almost knocked the tree over, but you wouldn’t believe what she came back out with. In our tree, stealing our decorations, was a squirrel with small infants to feed! It was quite the shocker, and my other five sisters almost fainted! After the initial shock, my mother and brother, Randolph, got around to making a little trap to capture the little beast in. I remember getting the little babies from Anne and purposefully placing them into the most dangerous part of the trap, just to see how she would react. I think me and Anne argued for the better part of the night, after that. Either way, we got the squirrel out, and it’s been in our tradition ever since to check the entire tree, not just for discrepancies in the wood or branches, but also for any living rodents.”

  Madison laughed, and Thomas grinned. “Not bad, huh? The squirrel was a nuisance for quite a while. I think I am the winner of our little contest of ‘funniest Christmas experiences’, wouldn’t you agree, Jemmy James?”

  “I’m not sure, Mr. Madison’s story was pretty funny, Jefferson,” said a voice from behind them. They turned around quickly in shock, thinking they were alone, only to see Hamilton leaning on a tree, his bullet balancing on the back of his hand while he watched the two living men.

  Thomas rolled his eyes, then chuckled. He put up one hand in surrender, looked at Madison, then said, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll give you that, James, your story was pretty good. But come now,” he turned back to Hamilton, “whose story do you think earns the title of ‘funniest’?”

  Hamilton took a few seconds, frowning slightly in thought, then flicked his bullet in the air, caught it, and said, “I’m very tempted to say Madison’s, but I found yours humorous as well… You’ll have to let me ‘sleep’ on it.”

  “Well, no need,” said Madison with amusement, “I give the win to Thomas, as Mr. President seemed to put a lot of pride in his story. Besides, now we need to walk out of this cemetery without attracting much attention, and though sharing Christmas stories is fun, and I’d love to hear one from Hamilton, I’d rather not do that while looking at a newspaper with the headline, ‘President and Vice President; Graverobbers!’”

  Thomas sighed, looked at Hamilton’s grave, then looked back at Hamilton. “Well, then? Do you have any tricks up your sleeve for this type of, um, mission? I mean, you’ve been able to do some other pretty crazy things, I assume you can do something for this, right?”

  Hamilton thought for a second, then said, “I might… but it would mean that you’ve got to be open to the idea of losing your body, if you catch what I’m trying to say, here, and I’ve never tried it before… I haven’t tried a lot of what I could potentially do yet.”

  Madison snickered a bit, then said, “What, is there some form of ghost manuel that you get on the first day of being dead? Is it titled ‘FOR THE UNFORTUNATELY DECEASED!’ or something? How come you know what you can or can’t do, or do you just take a guess and hope you're right?”

  Hamilton chuckled, his breath puffing out in clouds, and he looked straight at Madison, a smirk on his lips. “Well, if I told you, it would take away the suspense of dying and not having finished your purpose, you know? So I'm sorry, Madison, but my lips are sealed.”

  Thomas’s lips twitched into a small smile, then said, “Well, Why don't you try your atmosphere-to-person invisibility trick on us, so that people hanging around the streets won't have something to gawk at.”

  Hamilton sighed, mumbled something like, ‘Freaking paranoid statesmen’, then said, “Why don't we try dangerous tricks later, and just go back silently? I'm sure the public will only think you've gone to pay respects to dead people, and if anyone were to put in a news story, they’d’ve already seen you two. Now come on, let's go. I'm starting to get tired of being luminous green.”

  With a pair of laughs, the trio left the graveyard, calling upon a carriage to take them away. They met a halfway point, when the next day hit noon, and Madison left Thomas and Hamilton to make their way to the political central of the country. Hamilton was rather silent for much of the trip, and seemed to be studying his bullet to the tiniest details, seemingly trying to memorize every scratch and blemish as though he could determine a different reason as to why he died.

  Eventually, they walked through the door to Thomas’s office, and Thomas went to sit down, finally, in his comfy swivel chair, just as Hamilton started to pace as he said, “You know, I think it would be extremely funny to pop in on a bunch of writers and be the inspiration to many of their stories, don’t you think?”

  Thomas chuckled as he got out a stack of papers he needed to sign and maps he needed to go over. “Yes, I guess it would be. Why do you bring that up, though? It was barely a couple hours ago that we were chuckling over Christmas stories.”

  Hamilton shrugged, then slumped into one of the chairs in front of Thomas’s desk. He sighed happily, then said, “You wanted to hear a Christmas story from me, right? ‘Cause I’ve got one from the one year before Philip was shot and killed.”

  Thomas smiled warmly, then said, “Yeah, okay, I’d love to hear a story from you. I barely know anything about you or your family life, anyways. Besides, I can only imagine Christmas dinners must have been absolutely amazing with a woman like Elizabeth Schuyler.”

  Hamilton smiled, then said, “Hey now, watch your back. She was- sorry, is- strong woman, too, wasn’t captive in the kitchen. Now, it was right on the morning of Christmas, and John had run downstairs already, eager to open his presents, you know how children are. Philip had then joined him, followed by myself, Fanny, Angie, James and Alexander Jr. We were waiting for Eliza to wake up, for my dear wife was still fast asleep, and Philip had decided that no one was to open any presents until everyone, including Eliza, was up and experiencing Christmas together. I had started to worry that my kids wouldn’t consider my gifts good enough, as I tried to find things that they would like, but Eliza had already done her shopping, so I knew she had their first choices wrapped up and ready to go, and I stayed in the office overnight so often that I wasn’t completely sure what my kids were into anymore. Most of them had forgiven me for my mistakes, but I could tell that some of the younger ones, like John and James, still felt betrayed by the long nights away. Anyways, as everyone sat around the tree, waiting with baited breath, Philip spoke up and said, ‘Hey, pa, you should sing us a Christmas carol!’ then looked at me with wide, innocent eyes. Now, I’d told my kids before that I wasn’t much of a singer, so I thought, at the time, that it was Philip trying to embarrass me further with my terrible vocal chords. I started to say no, but all of my kids got in on the idea and repeated what Philip had said, so eventually I had to relent, you know. You just can’t say no to a group of fine, happy kids, especially if they’re your own. Anyways, I said to them, ‘Alright, alright, but what carol do you want me to sing?’ and you just wouldn’t believe the face that James gave me! His face lit up with the most excited expression, and he looked at me with awe, like I was the creator of the universe, or something. It melted my heart, which at that point in time had been frosted over because of the Pamphlet, and I didn’t want to crush that hopeful spark in his eyes. I said to him, ‘Hey, James, what carol would you like me to sing?’ and James cried out, ‘I want you to sing God Rest You Merry Gentlemen!’ as I gave a few chuckles. I never really had the voice to sing many things, which is one of the reasons why I never joined into anything to do with music, so I said to my kids, ‘I’m sorry for any mistakes I make in advance,’ to which Angie perked up. She said, ‘I doesn’t matter, as long as you’re the one to sing it for us, pops!’ and made her way over to me, sitting right in my lap. I laughed, then attempted my best at the carol, and you wouldn’t believe, that’s when Eliza came in.”

  Thomas smiled, then put a hand to his chest and said, “You’re not going to sing it for me? I’m offended that you’d sing for your lovely children and wife, and not for me, Mr. Hamilton. Not even a chance of me catching you singing?”

  Hamilton chortled a bit, then said, “No, not a chance. Now, let me continue, I’m almost done. Eliza walked in as I was halfway through the song, and I messed up a bit, thinking she’d still be in bed for a good while longer. She smiled at me, then waved her hand, signaling me to continue. I looked away from her, focusing on James, with, admittedly, a small blush crossing my face. I’d never let anyone hear me sing before, and as I finished the carol, I prayed to any and every deity that might be above that my family wouldn’t laugh at my voice. But, you know, all my kids just stared for a few seconds, then Philip piped up again, ‘See, I told you all, pop’s got an awesome voice! That’s where you got it from, Angie!’ and went over to my little daughter. Eliza came into the room proper, and said something along the lines of, ‘I didn’t know you could carol so well,’ to which I responded, ‘I can’t, you’re just humouring me because I’m your husband, though I’m not opposed to the complement.’ We laughed a bit, before John finally cried, ‘Let’s get on with presents!’ and my singing voice hasn’t been used since.”

  Thomas laughed, then said, “Well, I think it’s a shame that you haven’t sung since! Come now, Hamilton, you can’t possibly think that a compliment like that from a woman like yours, even if she is married to you, means nothing, can you? Here, let us sing something together, so that you won’t feel so much like a fish out of water. Let’s say… Joy to the World! You know that one, do you not?”

  Hamilton huffed out a laugh, then said, “Do I know Joy to the World. Jefferson, it’s only been around and written for 85 years. What do you think of me, man, an uncultured swine? Of course I know Joy to the World! My kids used to come into my office all the time during Christmas time, singing away it’s chords, because every year their school would do a choir performance with that song as it’s opening theme! And besides, I’ve been dead for barely a month, it’s not like I was shot and killed in the ages of  _ dragons _ , when they didn’t even have gunpowder yet!”

  Thomas sighed as he looked down at his papers, then laughed himself, and said, “Alright, true, true, everyone knows Joy to the World here in America. Also, just before we get to that, if you don’t mind my asking, me and James shared childhood stories, would you happen to have such a story?”

  The room seemed to become slightly colder, and Thomas shivered. There was a shift in the air, as though a solem, cold sadness had settled over the room. Thomas looked up at Hamilton, slightly shocked by the change in temperature, then softened his features when he saw Hamilton staring forlornly at the front of Thomas’s desk.

  Then he said, “Yeah, actually, I do have one. I almost forgot about it, it was so long ago. I… you know how I was orphaned, and made my way to the colonies, I assume? Or have you managed to not dive that deep while trying to find insult fuel?”

  Thomas nodded silently, watching as Hamilton looked up at him, sighed, then got up out of his seat to start pacing again. The room was oddly silent, and Thomas was struck with the realization that Hamilton’s feet made absolutely zero sound.

  “Well, this story goes before that. I was with my mother and brother, my father having already left us at that time. My mother had been the main breadwinner, though me and my brother, James Hamilton, did our parts as best we could. We didn’t have enough to get a tree from anybody, and living on Nevis, you’d be lucky to find a tree that you could chop down for Christmas without a permit that would fit into your living room. Instead of a tree, we’d constructed our own little Christmas thing, I think it was made out of hangers and green shirts, though I don’t remember. Anyways, I had woken up before either my mother or James, and I snuck out of our one little room, to sit beside our little Christmas spot. We had a little tradition that we’d each find and buy each other one thing and pass it to whomever it was for on the day of Christmas. The gifts were never under the tree-like thing, as there was no space under it to begin with, so they would be set aside, wrapped up and ready to go in whatever we had, on the small kitchen counter. I remember, that morning, sitting and waiting with baited breath, because that was the only time of the year that we got something that was purely for enjoyment. My mother came in an hour or so later, my brother in tow, and we one by one unwrapped our gifts. Being the youngest, I was made to wait on what I got, and by the time my turn came around, I was practically vibrating with anticipation. I remember my mother handing me her gift to me with the warmest smile. She always knew how to make me happy. She handed me the small, flat item, and hastily I tore off the wrapping. I remember the pure joy and happiness that practically poured out of me, because that was the first free book I’d ever gotten, and my God it was huge, compared to every other book I had! It was such a thick book, and my mind was almost unable to comprehend that a book could be that big! I loved it to pieces, and you know what? I think Eliza still has that book, though goodness knows it’s practically unreadable, now, with how many times I’ve flipped through it.”

  The room had slowly started to warm up, as Hamilton recited his memory to Thomas, and soon Thomas found himself back in normal room temperature once again. There was an almost uneasy silence between Hamilton and Thomas, as though the former was waiting for ridicule from the Democratic-Republican Virginian. Then Thomas finally broke the silence with one clap, then two.

  There was an odd satisfaction in being able to applaud someone for surviving so much, especially if they were then dead. Thomas soon found himself giving Hamilton a standing ovation, and, although he was only one man, gave a small whoop. Hamilton himself looked very embarrassed, his face going bright pink even though he had no blood to make the colouring possible. He shook his head, then said, “Oh, stop it, Thomas, don’t do that. My goodness, just… alright, alright! Thank you, it’s not that big a deal, that’s just how I grew up.”

  “We need to find your brother,” was Thomas’s reply. “Next week, we’re going on a manhunt for him. Do you know if he’s still alive? Do you have some form of, I don’t know, Force, or something, in which you would be able to tell if your sibling’s alive or not? Because while we’re at it, we could find my Vice President. Alright? Good, then, next week is planned. Any objections?”

  Hamilton just stood dumbstruck for a second, as Thomas sat down again and started to sort papers once more. Then he said, “You’re serious? You’d find my brother for me? You’d find James?”

  Thomas looked up at the ghost, then said, “Of course! Spirit of holiday stories, and besides, we’re hitched, now, might as well make you happy. And along the way, you can show me all those crazy little phantom tricks you have up your sleeve, eh?”

  With a snicker, Hamilton said, “Yeah, I guess. Alright, then, sure, that would be wonderful. I, uh, guess I’ll bother you in about a week, then, alright? I’m going to go check up on, um… the Headless Horseman, I guess. Make sure he’s not murdering anyone.”

  With a smile, Thomas said, “Bon voyage!” and watched Hamilton as he slowly disappeared from view.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOOF. THAT TOOK FOREVER TO WRITE I'M SO SORRY EVERYBODY. It has been a hard few weeks and I can't even give you a proper excuse. Any of you still with me are beautiful people. Also, that Force reference is there on purpose, same as any other reference, and LONG LIVE CARRIE FISHER, she'll live on in our hearts!

**Author's Note:**

> Alrighty, people, here's another story to start! I have too many ideas buzzing around my head, you people would not believe what my Google Drive is filled with!
> 
> So, for those of you who don't know, I's The B'y is a Canadian, or specifically Newfoundland, drinking song and sea shanty, and is actually in the Canadian music hall of fame, probably because it is (or was) so well known. I rather like it, and I know that it wasn't actually anywhere near the USA until recently, but I thought I'd add it in! 
> 
> Also, I'm still adding and editing Hamilton's new ghostie powers, so I don't really want to lay down any solid, restricting rules, but to number one thing that I'm sticking to is that everything that Hamilton does while visible uses energy around him, and usually energy comes in the form of heat. The temperature in the room will start to drop just from him being visible, and he'll use more energy if he moves or uses his ghostie powers while visible.
> 
> Also James Reynolds basically disappeared after his jail time when he was unfortunately married to Maria Lewis, so I can do absolutely anything I want with him!


End file.
